Opening Sojourner Truth House
- Moya Barnett
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
Moya Barnett on a new Calais house of hospitality
On the 15th of June 2025 the Quaker House WhatsApp group was created. Four of us, Missy, Bradon, Martin and I, all Quakers (or, in Bradon’s case, Quaker adjacent), all involved in refugee hospitality projects in Calais and with a dream of a new house of hospitality. We came together in response to the huge need we saw around us. From the everyday horrors of people living in tents with no access to running water, to the extreme emergency situations: women and children being sex trafficked, medical neglect, and police violence. We knew that there was a need for shelter and we hoped that we would be able to communicate this to people in the UK, particularly Quakers and people of faith, to raise the money for a new house for vulnerable refugee women and families.
The problems in Calais are systemic. Until the UK government stops using our taxes to pay for increased violence at the border, the unjust and immoral system of granting temporary asylum is changed in all European countries and, of course, we address the root causes of what people are running from, there will always be refugees. Climate change, causing droughts, floods, failed harvests and natural disasters. Wars, often sponsored by the same European countries that people flee to, and systems of injustice. These problems are huge, but we must do what we can. And what we can offer is a house and a community, even if only temporary. We can offer love and acceptance to people who have been hated and rejected at every turn. And we can offer rest along a long and arduous journey.
And so, using a GoFundMe, the four of us began to fundraise and spread the word. That summer, as the Union Jacks went up on lampposts, as the wave of hate we have come to know as normal became starkly visible, we also saw so many people give their money, prayers and support to our project. Quakers, Catholics, former refugees who had been through Calais themselves, people who had heard one of us speak about the project. It is one small, palpable way of fighting back against the wave of darkness.
Soon we found a house that we could rent, a normal terrace with three bedrooms and a garden with a shed that could be converted into a garden bedroom. It has sympathetic neighbours, having previously been used for a hospitality project, and the landlord was very happy that the house was going to be used for that purpose again.
A few months in, Paris joined our group. He had been involved with La Capuche, doing distribution of tents and bedding in Calais and he was doing a PhD in Ireland. Together, the five of us continued to fundraise, registered as a French charity, made safeguarding documents, talked about governance and ran monthly meetings for worship. Unfortunately, there was a lot of building work that needed to be done in the house and the landlord decided that he wanted to sell it rather than rent it. But, providentially, with the need came the resources and we found we had the €136,000 to buy the house outright.
In January we all met up in person for the first time. While many of us knew each other individually before, it wasn’t until then that we had a meeting that wasn’t over Zoom or WhatsApp video call! And in the Catholic Worker tradition we chose a name for our house. In the words of Paris in his ministry at Britain Yearly Meeting 2026: “After much discernment and looking within, we have decided to name our house Sojourner Truth House. Sojourner Truth was an African-American woman, from the 19th century, who regularly attended Quaker Meetings. She was involved in the Underground Railroad. She was someone who lived in a very divided world, but who held fast to the dignity of every person, even when others denied it. Acknowledging her in the naming of our house is a reminder that what unites us is a shared commitment to truth, to justice, and to seeing that of God in one another across all divides.”
In March we received the keys for Sojourner Truth House, renting it while the paperwork for buying went through and Missy moved in. There was still work to do. With help from volunteers from other associations, we painted, put up bunk beds and made the house a welcoming place. I trained and worked as a carpenter before becoming a Catholic Worker so in April I was at the house putting those skills to use. And finally in May we welcomed our first guests. Currently we have seven guests, three of them children. The house is full of life, play, laughter, toys strewn all over the conservatory floor. It is no longer an intangible dream of a house of hospitality, it has become a home.
There is still work to do; in the upcoming months we hope to welcome more short-term volunteers, for a month or more, to live in community with our guests. We also hope to buy a van so that we can do big food shops and help people get around. And we are hoping to finalise all of our paperwork – French bureaucracy is notoriously slow and complex – so that we can begin to apply for grants. We wouldn’t have made it this far without so many people supporting us, praying for us and donating. Through everything we have felt the presence of the Holy Spirit moving through us and through those who support us. Time and again, problems have been solved and everything has moved faster than any one of us could have imagined. We hope that Sojourner Truth House will remain open for many years, but even if it does not, even these few months of hospitality have made an impact on people’s lives, the awareness of what happens in Calais has changed people's hearts and we have a house, which, if needed, we can pass on to the next group with too much compassion and not enough money. I hope to be back in Calais twice more this year and then to spend a longer period of rest in the UK, followed by a year at Sojourner Truth House. Please hold us in the light and pray for us and the guests that we welcome.
Moya Barnett
